One of the horror genre's "most widely read critics" (Rue Morgue # 68), "an accomplished film journalist" (Comic Buyer's Guide #1535), and the award-winning author of Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), John Kenneth Muir, presents his blog on film, television and nostalgia, named one of the Top 100 Film Studies Blog on the Net.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

The TARDIS intercepts a Time Lord “communication
cube” (first seen in “The War Games”), and the Doctor (Matt Smith) is jubilant
because it means another survivor of his race could be alive out there somewhere.

With Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur
Darvill) in tow, The Doctor follows the cube’s trail outside the universe
itself, to a pocket universe.

There, unfortunately, a trap awaits them
all.

A dark force that consumes TARDISes has
been luring Time Lords to a junkyard planet for generations. The same dark force assumes control of the Doctor’s
TARDIS, but deposits the ship’s soul (or consciousness) inside a humanoid
woman, Idris.

Then, the beast strands the Doctor on the
planet, and heads back into the proper universe…to wreak havoc.

Now, the Doctor must team with Idris
(Suranne Jones) -- the very soul of the TARDIS -- to build a “junk” TARDIS,
escape from the pocket universe, and rescue Amy and Rory from the sinister and
sadistic alien intelligence now controlling their every breath…

With
over two-hundred stories already in its roster, Doctor Who continues to surprise and
delight with the remarkable, emotionally-affecting, and unexpected “The Doctor’s Wife.” Here, in the modern days of Matt Smith’s Era,
the series turns every standing franchise precept upside-down and provides an entirely fresh
perspective on the Whoniverse.

The
tale’s premise, in brief, is that the TARDIS Matrix gets put inside a human
body and can suddenly tell the Doctor’s story from its own unique perspective.

The
TARDIS stole the Doctor, not vice-versa, for example.

And she doesn’t like the
strays (the companions…) the Doctor brings home, except perhaps for the pretty
one…Rory.

The
greatest revelation of all, however, is that the TARDIS never takes the Doctor
where he wants to go. She takes him where he needs to go (hence the title, “The Doctor’s
Wife,” no doubt).

This one throwaway comment puts the
entirety of the Doctor’s history in a new and illuminating perspective The Doctor needed to go to Skaro and that creepy petrified forest and dead city in the original “The Daleks,” in other words. It wasn’t some mistake of fate…it was the knowing, guiding hand of the TARDIS.

Given
this revelation, I would be fascinated to learn how the TARDIS feels about the Doctor’s
span in the Time War, as the War Doctor.
How would the Doctor’s wife parse that service, I wonder? Did the TARDIS also serve the cause?

"The Doctor's Wife" is also heart-breaking because the Doctor finally meets his match -- in
terms of intellect, intelligence, stubbornness, and knowledge of the universe at
large -- and then realizes he can’t be with Idris. She
must return to the TARDIS's "body," and, once more, the Doctor is alone.

After
the Doctor himself, the TARDIS may be the most beloved “figure” in all of
Doctor Who history, and to feature an episode that explains the universe -- and
the Doctor’s own history -- from the ship’s perspective is nothing less than a brilliant conceit. But to further parse the
TARDIS as the Doctor’s wife -- his true north, whether he knows it or not -- is
even more audacious.

But what
I truly love about this story is that it fits in beautifully with the Matt Smith Era's overriding
theme: renewal of spirit.

The Doctor is very old
now -- perhaps senile, even -- and yet in the era of the Eleventh Doctor, he is constantly learning
something new about himself and the universe.

He hasn’t seen it
all.

He is no longer quite so
world-weary.

The universe still has the
capacity to surprise him (and in turn, surprise us).

What the Doctor really knows now is that he knows almost nothing at all.

The TARDIS isn’t just a machine (even an
intelligent machine…), it’s his wife, and so forth.

The old dog -- and, yes, the Eleventh Doctor often
acknowledges his age -- can still learn new tricks (like how to be a husband), and still be changed
(positively) during his travels. I love
that concept, and I love that it has been applied to Doctor Who. Smith's exuberant, manic, mile-a-minute approach to the character represents a consistent tour-de-force. Like Patrick Troughton, he is a brilliant physical comedian, but also an actor who can handle the dramatic scenes with unrelenting, heart-breaking honesty.

I
was not expecting to like Matt Smith as The Doctor. But I have been won over.

Indeed, I have friends that are long
time Doctor Who fans who actually refuse to watch the series because of his
casting in the role.

Well, it’s their
loss.

And what a loss.

Matt Smith demonstrates beautifully the
principle exemplified by William Hartnell: that the Doctor is an an individual -- and an alien -- of incomprehensible contradictions.If Hartnell is the young
one, with the physicality of an old man, then Matt Smith is the book-end
Doctor: the old soul in the young body. And the actor pulls off this conceit so beautifully. He makes it look easy, but it must be exhausting.

I
realize it is a controversial thing to say, but Doctor Who has never
been better -- never more magical or more
heartfelt -- than it has been during the span of this Eleventh Doctor
(especially during the Amy Pond, Rory era..)

Something new and remarkable has been added to this old show's creative mix: a sense of wonder. Yes, that sense of was
implied in the old stories, but the production design could never fully or adequately depict it.

Here, we have the perfect blend
of magical worlds -- well-visualized -- with a magical character.

The
Doctor is not supposed to be magical, you say?

Well,
the Doctor has been a cranky old man on the run, a Loki-like force of disorder, a physically-athletic “Venusian karate” expert, a
master chess-man, a war veteran, and an emotionally-isolated sensitive. He has been seen as senile, arrogant,
cunning, deceitful, and sad.

Why can’t
he be a vehicle for wonder too?

The up-shot of this approach is that Doctor Who has never been more
unpredictable, more accomplished, or better-realized than it is right now, on
the Eve of the Fiftieth Anniversary. That's something to celebrate, not nitpick.

I'll go further, since this is the last post of my Doctor Who Week: Matt’s
Smith Era is also the Golden Age of Doctor Who.

So happy birthday, Doctor, you've earned the celebration of a lifetime...or eleven.

When The TARDIS lands on a derelict vessel deep in
space, The Doctor (David Tennant), Rose Tyler (Billie Tyler) and Mickey (Noel
Clarke) investigate the situation, and discover a time door aboard the craft leading to
eighteenth century Paris, on Earth.

There, the Doctor spies a young girl, Reinette in her bedroom,
and realizes she is in danger from a strange Clockwork Man automaton. He saves her from it, but the young girl
imagines it all a bad dream, and fantasizes the Doctor as a protector and
imaginary friend.

Since time on each side of the fireplace flows differently,
when the Doctor next attempts to save Reinette (Sophia Myles) from a clockwork android, she is an adult, and remembers him from her childhood dreams. The Doctor also soon realizes that she is soon
to become the infamous mistress of King Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour.

While the Doctor interfaces with 1700s France, Rose
and Mickey discover that the clockwork androids are using surgically-removed
body parts from the (dead) starship crew to repair the vessel’s massive damage. The Doctor fears that the androids have set
their sights on the one human brain they believe can power the ship’s computer:
Reinette’s.

The Doctor attempts to save Reinette from a fate worse
than death, but recognizes a kindred spirit in her, and begins to grow close to
her…

In general, I’m not a big fan of stories
in which The Doctor falls in love with a human being.

For one thing, such a love affair doesn’t
seem likely given the vast differences between species. In “Rose,” for instance, the Doctor refers to
humans, in a fit of rage, as “apes.” This descriptor suggests how the character
views the distance between his race, the Time Lords, and the human race.

Humans don’t fall in apes, and if the
metaphor holds, Time Lords shouldn’t fall in love with humans, either.

After all, how many apes -- even the most
intelligent apes -- have you felt the
desire to be involved in a physical romance with?

I’ve always considered it a bridge too far
in terms of fan service to suggest that the Doctor might fall in love with and engage in a
sexual relationship with a human, given the apparent -- and acknowledged -- gulf
between species.

I’m absolutely okay with Amy Pond and
Martha Jone being hot for the Doctor, since he appears human (and also
attractive), and since their desires for physical love go unrequited. The Doctor rejects their attempts to become
intimate with him.

But otherwise, frankly, it starts to
get icky.

Already in the new series, we’ve seen the
beloved Sarah Jane Smith ret-conned so as suggest she was always in love with the Doctor (“School Reunion”), an idea that feels
cheap given the great and sturdy friendship the two characters actually shared during the
eras of the Third and Fourth Doctor.

I enjoy tremendously the sentimentality and
nostalgia of “School Reunion,” but the idea that Sarah is a spurned “ex” who must come to terms with her displacement in the Doctor’s romantic life for a
younger model (Rose) is an absolute disservice to Elisabeth Sladen’s strong character,
who -- for many fans -- remains a 1970s feminist icon. Does anyone else remember her discussion of
female power in “Monster of Peladon?”

Of course, Rose obviously falls in love
with the Doctor during her time with him in the TARDIS too, and has those feelings reciprocated even though a physical relationship never resulted until a human clone of the Doctor
came into the picture.

In the long run, I feel that this kind of material doesn't serve the characters, or the series itself.

Yet sometimes -- as is abundantly the case with “The
Girl in the Fireplace" -- a romance in the Doctor’s life is necessary,
dramatically-speaking, because it reflects or suggests something crucial about
the Doctor’s non-human nature (and not merely that he would romance an ape, given
half the chance.)

“The Girl in the Fireplace” is a beautiful
tale not because it is about a tragic, and unfulfilled love affair, but because it
exemplifies the very nature of the Doctor’s existence in a way that his
relationship with the companions simply cannot, given the limitations of our human viewpoint.

The Doctor views time differently than we do, and lives an extended life-span by
our standards. So his time with Rose, or
Donna, or Martha, is but a blip. They
age and die, and he is still young. The Doctor tells us this many times. We know it intellectually, but on a week-to-week basis, we don't really see it. We see them together, not separated by time.

However, that very idea -- of being separated by fast-moving time and a long life-span -- is expressed beautifully with the
concept of the Time Door in this episode.
The Doctor appears in Reinette’s life when she is young. But literally every time he sees
her again, she is older…and different. When he
returns for her the final time, she is dead.

She is gone, in other words, in the blink of an eye, a least by the Doctor’s (and audience's...) perspective

We see the companions in every adventure
and so, in essence, we are on “their” time, and don’t experience their travels
by the Doctor’s perspective. The magic of “The Girl in the
Fireplace” (and also “The Eleventh Hour” and “The Girl Who Waited”) is that the
writer has found a way for us to viscerally experience the Doctor’s life; as a
man alone who out-lives all those around him. He barely has time to make a move before it is too late. Time robs him of his friends and companions.

Thus, the romance angle in "The Girl in the Fireplace" is actually a symbol for something other than physical love. It is a representation of the fleeting connection
between the Doctor and any soul who isn’t a Time Lord.

The Doctor wants to connect, but just when that connection gets interesting, the other person in the
relationship grows old and dies.

People
complain a great deal about Moffat’s stories, and his stewardship of Doctor
Who, but I admire his work because he writes emotional stories that help us experience what it might
be like to be an ageless time traveler.

Instead of focusing just on the fact that one can travel anywhere and
anywhere, his work permits audiences to see that there are drawbacks too.We learn that the Doctor visits other worlds,
meets many people, and helps lots more. But in the end, every day, he is
alone, a solitary figure.

This is a perspective we might have intuited in the classic series and even felt on occasion (like the Third Doctor's sad goodbye to Jo, in "The Green Death"), but in Tennant's era (under Davies stewardship), it is the dominant theme, the story behind all the stories. And no story captures that theme better than this one, penned by Moffat.

David Tennant, the tenth iteration of the
Doctor, is especially strong in dealing with this sort of material. He plays the most sensitive of all Doctors, and can
express mourning, loneliness, and regret beautifully. This makes sense in terms of the character’s
overall “arc.” He is a little further
away from the guilt of the Time War than Eccleston’s incarnation, but growing
ever more aware of how “alone” he is as the last time lord.

Tennant is not my favorite Doctor -- I would vote for Patrick Troughton, Tom
Baker, or to my complete and utter surprise, Matt Smith – but I like and admire Tennant's incarnation tremendously, and feel he is a great Doctor. It is difficult to imagine a different actor
pulling off a story like “The Girl in the Fireplace” or “Human Nature,” but
Tennant is the right Doctor at the right time.
You can see in every performance his longing to connect, and his
reluctance to connect.

In the final analysis, “The Girl in the Fireplace” is a great Doctor Who story because it
makes us feel the Doctor’s agony at being alone, and even share his viewpoint of
human life going by at warp speed.

Also,
the Clockwork robots are magnificent and diabolical villains in terms of their
appearance.In some way, they are
perfect monsters for Doctor Who: they drive the story from point to point, but don’t get in
the way of character development.And
they’re scary as hell.

But I really picked us this story because it reveals best the Tennant Doctor.

He is a man who wants to connect, but sees connection shut down at every juncture ("The Girl in the Fireplace," "Doomsday," "Human Nature.") He is so shattered by this fact that by the end of his era, he is loudly embracing his alone-ness, and calling himself "Time Lord Victorious."

Because of Tennant's remarkable performances -- and humanity -- you can see how that destroys him inside.

Friday, November 22, 2013

A
young woman in London, Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), unexpectedly discovers
strange, living mannequins inhabiting the basement of the metropolitan
department store where she works. Rose
is rescued from the hostile ambulatory creatures by a strange man who calls
himself The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston).

After
the Doctor blows up the store, thus destroying the mannequin threat, Rose
becomes obsessed with him, and learns that the mysterious man has appeared
again and again, throughout human history, in times leading up to disaster or
strife. He was present at the Kennedy
assassination in 1963, and at the launching of the Titanic in 1912.

When
she encounters the Doctor once more, Rose learns that he is an alien -- and a
veteran of some cosmic war – who is hunting the master of those mannequins, or
Autons: a giant being known as the Nestene Consciousness. The Nestene, recovering from the same war, is
planning to transform the Earth into one of its “protein” planets in direct
violation of the Shadow Proclamations, and the Doctor is determined to stop it.

When
the Doctor is captured by the Autons during a confrontation with the Nestene
Consciousness, Rose comes to the rescue, and realizes that she possesses value
beyond being a mere “shop-girl.”

When
the Doctor reveals his spaceship and time machine, the TARDIS, Rose decides to
travel with him…

Doctor
Who (2005 -
) made a triumphant return to television in the War on Terror Age, and the
changes and updates to the series format reflect this historical context. For the first time in his history, the Doctor
is now a veteran, having served in the devastating Time War which destroyed
Gallifrey and vast swaths of the galaxy.

The
other global innovation since 1989 that “Rose” reflects in terms of drama is the
Internet. Rose Tyler performs the
equivalent of a Google Search in this episode to learn more about the Doctor,
and she promptly discovers that there are web-sites devoted to the mysterious
character. She is then able to track down a web master and get the skinny about
him. A discovery that once would have
required a trip to the library and a table filled with dusty old books is
instead a lightning-fast journey on the information super-highway. In some ways, this aspect of the episode is a
metaphor for the more pacey, more tech savvy new Who: It veritably races
from discovery to discovery, and (delightfully) challenges the viewer to keep
up.

Beyond
these New Millennium touches, “Rose” -- again delightfully -- adopts a fresh
stance in Doctor Who history: it dramatizes its tale from the perspective
of the companion, not the Doctor.

We
start this journey not with the Doctor landing the TARDIS in 2005 London, but with
Rose waking up to the blaring of her alarm clock, and preparing to go to
(joyless…) work at the shop. The focus
is thus on an “earthly” life giving way to a galactic one, and it is a remarkable
re-vamp. In many ways, this episode
functions as a kind of Doctor Who fan’s “wish fulfillment”
story. It thrives on the notion of
living one’s life, day–by-day, hour-by-hour, only to be plucked out of that
monotonous routine and obscurity by a character who is God-like, and who sees
the value in you that mainstream
society, for whatever reason, simply can’t recognize. We all believe we’re worthy of being the
Doctor’s companion, don’t we?

The
invitation to travel with the Doctor is the invitation, indeed, of a life-time
(or many lifetimes…), and there’s such rampant joy and energy in this premiere
episode of the re-vamped series precisely because it recognizes that fact.

In
short order, Rose becomes one of the most beloved companions in Doctor
Who history, and this fact has much to do not only with Billie Tyler’s
wonderful, charismatic performances in the role, but the fact that her
character is expressly the audience’s
surrogate, asking the questions we would ask, taking the journey we might hope
to take.

Looking
back at the series premiere with eight years of hindsight, it’s clear too that “Rose”
features a surfeit of dodgy CGI special effects. And the scene with an Auton version of Mickey (Noel Clarke) sharing dinner at a restaurant with an oblivious Rose is absolutely cringe-inducing.
It sets too jokey a tone, it seems on
retrospect. We recognize from a distance
-- and not even knowing Mickey very well -- that something is wrong with him,
both in terms of appearance and demeanor.
How could Rose -- at close-up range, and having a long relationship with
the same man -- not know that something weird has happened?

Nonetheless,
this premiere episode works marvelously because it keys in on that basic human
desire to live a fuller life, to see things no one else has seen, and to be
recognized as special. “Rose” is really
about yearning, especially the
yearning felt by young people to find a place in a world that seems to want to
limit them to many unappealing or unattractive options.

Christopher
Eccleston probably does not get enough credit for his re-invention of the
Doctor as a man who feels “tremendous
guilt” over what he has done (in terms of combat in the Time War). He delivers an amazing monologue in this
story, wherein he describes how he can feel the very turn of the Earth’s orbit.

Imagine
for a moment being that sensitive to life, to the cosmos, to change, and then
imagine that you are called upon to destroy such life. It’s practically heart-breaking.

Eccleston’s
Ninth Doctor is occasionally prickly and rude, but again, the Doctor isn’t
human, is he? Why do we expect him to
observe our social graces? This
incarnation carries a tremendous moral burden, it is plain, and that alone
makes him different from the Doctors we knew in the classic series. Eccleston’s incarnation is the first post-War
Doctor, we now know, and must contend with being alone, and having no one to
whom he can confess his sins. I have
always felt that The Doctor befriended Rose in the first place because he knew
she would make him confront his actions, and help him to understand or
contextualize them. She reminds him that
there is good in him, and that “the promise” of his name – to be a healer – can
live again.

In
terms of internal logistics, “Rose” does raise some questions. At one point, the Ninth Doctor looks in the
mirror at Rose’s apartment and seems to see himself for the first time, as if
he has just regenerated.

Yet
later in the episode, we see images and artwork that suggests this incarnation
of the Doctor -- Eccleston’s -- was also present at the launch of the Titanic,
the eruption of Krakatoa, and the Kennedy Assassination.

How
could he have experienced all these previous adventures if he just regenerated
into this new form?

The
obvious answer is that these are Eccleston adventures “yet to come” (meaning
that they follow “Rose” in terms of series chronology, but simultaneously occur
in older historical time periods). Yet
we also now know -- since Rose traveled with this Doctor right up through his next
regeneration -- that this is not the case.
We never got an adventure at Krakatoa, Dallas in 1963, or aboard the HMS
Titanic.

This
scene could have been improved in two ways.

First,
we could have seen that it was a different incarnation of the Doctor in that
art work and imagery (one of the previous eight). Such a change would have the added bonus of letting
long-time fans know that this is a continuation and not a re-boot.

Or
secondly, imagine Rose’s surprise if she instead found an artist’s rendering of
herself, standing next to the Doctor at Krakatoa, before she ever traveled with
him.That would have made for an
incredibly dramatic moment, I think, and added to Rose’s sense of paranoia.

As
it stands, these references to past Ninth Doctor adventures are a bit confusing,
especially given the facts we know of the Eccleston Era.

Finally,
I love that author and producer Russell Davies finds time in “Rose” to
demonstrate the Doctor’s core decency. He has the opportunity to destroy the Nestene
Consciousness, but states instead “I’m
not here to kill it. I have to give it a
chance.” In other words, he is
re-establishing his moral high ground. At the time (2005), we took this to be a
re-assertion of the Doctor’s long-standing goodness. Now, we might view it as a return to the
promise he knowingly broke as The War Doctor.

There
have been many episodes of the new Who that are much, much better than
“Rose,” but it seems churlish to complain about the quality of the inaugural
installment, since it launched the series brilliantly, and is far, far better
than any classic Doctor Who episodes/productions we got in the 1980s or
1990s.

The
kernels of greatness are here, and a new generation fell in love with Time Lord
because of that…

While
transporting the remains of his dead rival, The Master, from Skaro to
Gallifrey, the Seventh Doctor’s (Sylvester McCoy) TARDIS experiences a “timing malfunction” and lands on Earth
in the “Humanian Era,” on the eve of
the new millennium, December 30, 1999

Unfortunately,
the malfunction has been caused by the Master himself, who in a strange, slimy
reptilian form, escapes from captivity and moves into the body of an
unsuspecting American paramedic (Eric Roberts).

Upon
venturing out of the TARDIS, the Doctor is almost immediately injured in urban
San Francisco’s gang violence. He is
rushed to a hospital, where a cardiac surgeon Grace Holloway (Daphne Ashbrook)
operates on him. Unfortunately, he
appears to die on the table, though he actually regenerates that night, in the
morgue.

The
new Doctor (Paul McGann) -- suffering from amnesia -- befriends Dr. Holloway,
and together the duo must prevent the Master from opening The Eye of Harmony
inside the TARDIS for the express purpose of stealing all the Doctor’s future
lives…

Worse,
the Master’s plan will destroy Earth’s future, meaning that the world will
stop, permanently, when New Year’s Day, 2000, happens.

An
American co-production with the BBC, the 1996 Doctor Who movie stars
Paul McGann as the eighth incarnation of the Doctor, and also features a
good-sized role for Sylvester McCoy, the seventh Doctor, who hands off the role
to his successor with style and grace.

Like
many
Doctor Who serials of the classic series, the Doctor Who TV movie
functions primarily in “pastiche” mode.
This means, essentially, that it skillfully pulls ideas from popular
productions in the culture, and then blends them together in a new and
frequently amusing fashion.

The
Paul McGann movie, directed by Geoffrey Sax pulls ideas from The
Terminator movie franchise (right down to visual framing, at one point),
the pre-eminent genre franchise of the day, The X-Files (in terms of
an Earth-based mystery involving aliens), and also the increasingly popular
post-modernism of horror genre films such as Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
(1994) and Scream (1996)

In
terms of The Terminator (1984), the Doctor Who features two time
travelers from another culture (otherworldly, rather than the future…) duking
it out on modern-day Earth, while a human bystander is pulled into the
action. The Terminator and the Master both
wear sun-glasses and leather, and both cause much destruction. Both are also endeavoring to re-shape the
future.

The
X-Files,
meanwhile, famously gave 1990s audiences “the black oil,” a kind of sentient
ooze that would crawl up inside of human beings and take them over. Those possessed by the evil of the black ooze
on the Chris Carter would then also boast black eyeballs. In The Doctor Who movie, the Master is seen
as a kind of reptilian ooze, sliming to the TARDIS console, and down the throat
of an unwitting EMT. Similarly, those
possessed by the Master (in this case, Grace), showcase the telltale black eyes
of the oil.

Finally,
the eighth doctor movie explicitly compares the Doctor’s regeneration to the famous
“It’s Alive” moment of revival of the monster in James Whales’ Frankenstein
(1932), which happens to be playing on television during the Time
Lord’s regeneration process.

At
one point the film explicitly cross-cuts from the Monster’s hand twitching to
the Doctor’s hand undertaking the very same motion. The allusion is intriguing, but it ultimately
doesn’t serve as anything beyond a recognition of the fact that the makers of
the movie are aware of pop culture. Is the Doctor being compared to a monster?
Is his regeneration, monstrous? It’s a
nice allusion a beloved old film, but nothing more. The moment would have worked better if the
Master’s resurrection had been intercut with footage from Frankenstein.

Although
Paul McGann is splendid in the role of the Eighth Doctor and certainly deserved
his own long run in the role, his TV Movie isn’t especially good. It looks like what it is: a cheap TV
production circa the mid-1990s. The
special effects haven’t aged particularly well, the acting is generally pretty
bad, and there doesn’t seem to be much by way of budget which could show
audiences anything special. Most of the
action is very tame, and the details surrounding the Eye of Harmony are quite
confusing.

Alas,
the 1996 Doctor Who movie also adds some baffling new ideas to the
long-standing canon.

First
among those is the Doctor’s surprising revelation that he is half-human (on his
mother’s side). This is a shock to say
the least, and may not be accepted as canon by fans. I suspect this was a bone thrown to American
producers so the character would seem “relatable,” or some other such nonsense.

Secondly,
the Master -- though described as a rival Time Lord -- is depicted in his
natural form as a kind of snake or reptile.
We see his reptilian eyes, and his coiled, snake-like body, at
points. What’s this about? If he is a Time Lord, are all Time Lords reptilian?
If the Doctor and The Master are both
Time Lords, why are they physiologically so different from one another? There
are no doubt fan ret-cons for this mystery, but no explanation appears in the
movie.

Finally,
since when is the TARDIS’s chameleon circuit known as a “cloaking device?”

Despite
such stumbles, this Doctor Who TV-movie makes an honorable attempt to continue faithfully
the ideas and characters of the franchise as seen on the BBC series, circa
1963-1989. The Doctor’s old sonic
screwdriver makes an appearance, for instance, and the series even resurrects
an old logo from Jon Pertwee’s era.

Similarly,
the film went to the trouble of casting Sylvester McCoy for the
pre-regeneration scenes, thus establishing a direct link between seventh and
eighth Doctors. Had the filmmakers not
taken this step, the TV movie today would likely be remembered as completely
apocryphal (like the Cushing films of the 1960s).

It’s
also fair to state that this Doctor Who movie pointed the way
towards the re-invention in several regards.

For
one thing, we get a very attractive, young, leading man-type Doctor in Paul
McGann’s incarnation, as we later get with Eccleston, Tennant, and Smith. No grandfatherly or father types, as was the
case with Hartnell and Pertwee.

Also,
the interior of the TARDIS is redesigned here and for the first time actually
looks gigantic, much as it would in the modern era. But the central column is clearly
recognizable, as it remains to this day.

Last
but not least -- and this is probably the most controversial touch -- there’s a
hint of romance here between the Doctor and his companion, Grace. On more than one occasion, the duo locks
lips, and, well, you can pretty easily sense the desire.

Once
more, the new series has picked up on this dimension, with the Doctor and Rose
falling in love, and Martha Jones also falling hard for the Time Lord.

In
the original series, the Doctor never made eyes at any of his beautiful male or
female companions…and there were many, to be certain. In the new show, there seems to be a hint of
romance or attraction between the Doctor and virtually every companion (well,
not Rory…).

Today,
contextualize the McGann movie as a not entirely-effective missing link between
the original series and the new series.
In many ways, it is more nimble and fun than the last seasons on BBC
were, but some aspects -- like the acknowledgment of the Doctor’s human half --
seem way off. The film’s plot-line is
also muddled, and the Doctor’s solution to the closing of the Eye of Harmony
doesn’t seem to make sense in light of what we know about time travel.

Doctor
Who would
not reach its full potential, again, until 2005, and yet I’m still grateful to
have this 1996 movie in the catalog.

Finally,
there is one visual composition in this TV movie that I absolutely love. An amnesiac doctor wanders through an abandoned
wing of a San Francisco hospital, and sees his reflection for the first time…in
eight mirrors. We get eight views of him
with his new face, because, of course, this is his eighth incarnation. I love that moment. It’s as if the mirror is explicitly reminding
him of his long and noble history…

About John

award-winning author of 27 books including Horror Films FAQ (2013), Horror Films of the 1990s (2011), Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), TV Year (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007), Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair (2006),, Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company (2004), The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi (2004), An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith (2002), The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film & Television (2004), Exploring Space:1999 (1997), An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica (1998), Terror Television (2001), Space:1999 - The Forsaken (2003) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002).

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What the Critics Say...

"...some of the best writing about the genre has been done by John Kenneth Muir. I am particularly grateful to him for the time and attention he's paid to things others have overlooked, under-appreciated and often written off. His is a fan's perspective first, but with a critic's eye to theme and underscore, to influence and pastiche..." - Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files, in the foreword to Horror Films FAQ (October 2013).

"Hands down, John Kenneth Muir is one of the finest critics and writers working today. His deep analysis of contemporary American culture is always illuminating and insightful. John's film writing and criticism is outstanding and a great place to start for any budding writer, but one should also examine his work on comic books, TV, and music. His weighty catalog of books and essays combined with his significant blog production places him at the top of pop culture writers. Johns work is essential in understanding the centrality of culture in modern society." - Professor Bob Batchelor, cultural historian and Executive Director of the James Pedas Communication Center at Thiel College (2014).

"...an independent film scholar, [Muir] explains film studies concepts in a language that is reader-friendly and engaging..." (The Hindu, 2007)"...Muir's genius lies in his giving context to the films..." (Choice, 2007)